My top six lessons learned from serving customers

Where did you learn your customer service skills?

There's a good chance many came from experience. You might even remember specific customer interactions that taught valuable lessons.

Sure, you might have taken a class. Perhaps you had a good boss or mentor. Yet those lessons often didn't sink in until you tried them out with a customer.

That's my story.

Many of my customer service skills can be traced directly to customer interactions. Here are six of my favorites, starting with the first customer I ever served.

Lesson #1: Know your product

My first customer service encounter ended in service failure.

I was 16 years old and had just started working at a retail clothing store. It was 15 minutes into my first day when the person training me went on break, leaving me by myself in the men's department.

A customer approached and asked if we carried a particular product. I had no idea since I hadn’t yet been trained. Nervous and inexperienced, I struggled to respond and the customer stormed out of the store.

It was a terrible feeling.

I vowed never to let it happen again and immediately tried to learn everything I could about our products. Just two months later, my product knowledge was improved so much that I was asked to help train a new employee.

That first experience was the motivation for my career in customer service training. Here's the rest of my first customer story.

Lesson #2: Care about the questions you ask

Just a few days into my first job, I developed the habit of approaching every customer and asking, "How are you doing?" Every customer reflexively answered "Fine," until one customer changed the script.

"I'm terrible!"

All I could muster in response was stunned silence. Before I could gather myself, she added, "Well, you asked!"

I realized I hadn’t cared about the answer. It made me wonder how many other times I might have missed something important when I asked a routine question without caring about the customer’s response.

The experience taught me to care about the questions I asked.

Just a few days later, another customer came into the store. I greeted her with, “How are you?” and she admitted she was having a bad day. This time I was prepared, and I was able to help her leave the store feeling better than when she arrived.

Lesson #3: Be a customer advocate

One of my favorite customer service lessons came from a customer who said to me, "Sometimes you have to bend a few rules to make it happen."

That was in response to me saying, "I'm just following the rules."

I was an account manager for a uniform company. The customer wanted to order some items embroidered with his company's logo, but he wasn't happy about the two-week lead time I had quoted.

My response reflected my inexperience. Just recently, my boss had chided the department for not following proper procedures and I was anxious to avoid getting in trouble. That influenced the way I responded to the customer's request for a faster delivery.

His comment stopped me in my tracks. It made me realize I didn't add any value to the relationship if I couldn't help my customer achieve his goals. I needed to be the customer's advocate.

It took extra work and a lot of creativity, but I found a way to get the customer's order out in a week instead of two. My customer was pleased and I managed to avoid breaking any rules that would have displeased my boss.

Lesson #4: Apologize deeply

"You shouldn't have to experience this."

The words blurted out of my mouth. A customer had called, upset about receiving the wrong item. I saw past their anger and empathized with the inconvenience it was causing them. Frankly, I was embarrassed it had happened.

"I'm really sorry about the mistake. We need to do better. I'm going to make sure we send you the correct item."

Something amazing happened. The customer instantly went from red to green. Their frustration evaporated and suddenly they were trying to comfort me!

"It's okay," the customer said. "These things happen. I really appreciate your help."

I had just discovered the magic of a real, heartfelt apology. It turned out it wasn't a one-time fluke. The technique worked again and again. Customers calmed down and became more cooperative nearly every time I gave a heartfelt apology.

Would you like to know the secret? Here's a short guide to making better apologies.

Lesson #5: Don't trust the system

"Did you even look at it?"

The customer had previously ordered a very expensive item that had arrived damaged. The initial call came to me, the customer service manager at a catalogue company that sold antiques and collectibles from Eastern Europe.

I promised to send him a replacement, but the replacement arrived damaged, too. His words burned me with embarrassment because I had trusted our system and hadn't checked his order.

My mistake was assuming it was a one-off error and not checking to find the source of the problem. If I had, I would have discovered our entire inventory was damaged.

From that day forward, I never assumed that a problem was a one-off occurrence. I dug into the root causes until I could find the source and be assured it wouldn't happen again.

I've lost count of how many service failures that saved.

Lesson #6: You matter

It was going to be my last day. I was working as a contract trainer, facilitating onsite workshops for clients on behalf of the company that hired me.

I was feeling frustrated and unappreciated as I set up the training room for what I expected to be my last class. My plan was to give the client a great workshop and then tell the contractor that I was done.

The contractor wasn't great. Its training materials were poor and their client service was rotten. This put me in an awkward position as their representative, since I was the one serving upset clients. I did the best I could with the limited materials and was careful to avoid disparaging the contractor.

Just before my class started, one of the client's leaders pulled me aside. She told me that she was very unhappy with the contractor, but appreciated all of my effort to consistently deliver great workshops.

Then she handed me a thank you card and a gift certificate to a local restaurant.

My spirits suddenly soared! I hadn't realized that my extra effort was noticed by the client. Now I realized that it really did matter.

That experience inspired one of my favorite customer service training exercises called the Thank You Letter Challenge. It works by imagining a thank you letter you'd hope to receive from a customer and then trying to receive a real version.

Conclusion

Customers can teach you many valuable lessons about service, if you're open to learning them. What lessons have customers taught you?

How to hold customer service employees accountable

Accountability is difficult.

Some managers want to avoid a confrontation. Others struggle with timing in a fast-paced environment. For a few managers, accountability discussions feel like the first step towards inevitably losing an employee.

Have you tried replacing someone right now? It's hard.

A LinkedIn post asked managers to share what they find most difficult about holding customer service employees accountable. It was a fascinating discussion.

One thing the discussion revealed was that many managers start thinking about accountability way too late. Here's a proven process that starts much sooner, and is more comfortable for both managers and employees.

What is employee accountability?

Accountability is not exclusively for underperforming employees, and it's not primarily about employee discipline. Holding an employee accountable means making them responsible for their work.

Here's how the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines accountability:

an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions

Using this definition, accountability goes hand-in-hand with what good employees want. They want to be entrusted with responsibility and given the opportunity to take ownership of their work.

What are the four steps to accountability?

There are four major steps to holding employees accountable for their work. Following these steps carefully can help avoid many of the uncomfortable aspects of accountability, such as issuing formal warnings.

Step 1: Set expectations

Employees need to understand exactly what you want them to do if they are going to take responsibility for their actions.

Check your ability to set clear expectations by answering three questions:

  1. Are your expectations clearly defined?

  2. Do employees fully understand the expectations?

  3. Do employees agree to the expectations?

It's not enough to tell employees to do something. Two-way communication with your team is required to know if employees understand and agree to fulfill expectations.

Step 2: Train and coach

Helping employees perform their jobs well is one of your primary responsibilities as a manager. Training, feedback, and coaching is often required to help employees develop the skills to do their job. They also need the tools, equipment, resources, and best practices necessary to do good work.

Step 3: Improve performance

There are times when employees will struggle to get the job done, meet quality standards, or otherwise do great work. It's important to get to the root cause of these performance problems so they can be solved.

Poor performance is often unintentional. In many cases, employees want to do good work, but something is getting in the way. A collaborative discussion with an underperforming employee can often reveal an unseen opportunity to quickly improve.

You can use my quick fix checklist to guide these discussions.

If you have access to LinkedIn Learning, you can view an entire course on solving common performance problems that plague customer service employees.

Step 4: Create consequences

Managers who use steps 1-3 to hold employees accountable will rarely need to resort to written warnings, performance improvement plans, or even firing employees.

However, there are times when managers must create consequences for poor performance or bad behavior. Here are three examples:

Lack of ability. Some employees can't do the job. Perhaps it was a hiring mistake or there's some other reason they simply aren't able to do good work. Try to move these employees to a role that better suits their talents if you can. Otherwise, you'll have to let them go.

Lack of responsibility. A few employees don't want to do the job. These employees will sometimes improve if they understand there are real consequences to repeated poor performance.

Toxic behavior. This includes harassment, fraud, or other egregious violations of company policy. I recommend firing those employees before they infect others.


How do you create a culture of accountability?

Accountability starts at the top. As a manager, it's up to you to set the tone and be a role model for your team.

Make sure employees understand their responsibilities and are able to do their jobs effectively. Observe employee performance and have frequent check-ins so employees know you are there to support them.

Don't let issues slide, especially big ones. Your approach doesn't have to be mean—you can usually get better results by working with employees to solve problems. But it should be crystal clear that poor performance won't be ignored.

Accountability becomes contagious once it's a habit.

Employees on high-performing teams encourage each other, support each other, and help each other do better. Many are surprisingly willing to resolve problems amongst themselves, which ultimately makes your job easier.

Conclusion

Holding your employees accountable means helping them do great work. You can help them achieve their full potential, and do great work beyond what even they felt possible.

How service culture is built on everyday hero moments

The original Shake Shack location is in New York City's Madison Square Park. The first time I visited, Al Roker was there.

Roker was handing out samples of his new Roker Burger. It was a special burger he created with Shake Shack to raise money for No Kid Hungry, a nonprofit dedicated to ending childhood hunger.

A Today Show crew was there to film the segment.

Shake Shack's mission is to Stand for Something Good. Working with a celebrity to create a special burger and get national news coverage to raise money for a nonprofit certainly aligned with that mission.

That's one example of the Shake Shack service culture, but it's not the example.

Al Roker doesn't show up to hand out hamburgers every day. You probably don't have opportunities for grand, heroic moments every day at your company, either.

Employees need examples of routine, everyday behaviors to follow.

What are everyday hero moments?

My fellow author and customer service keynote speaker, Adam Toporek, defines a customer hero as "someone who is there when you need them."

Toporek used this definition in his terrific book, Be Your Customer's Hero. We talked more about the meaning in this interview.

I experienced an everyday hero moment at Shake Shack in downtown Los Angeles.

My wife, Sally, and I wanted a quick bite after a long day. We were tired and needed a boost. The friendly, enthusiastic cashier picked us up with his infectious enthusiasm and suddenly we were smiling again.

I joked with him about the sheer volume of Shake Shack merchandise I saw him and his coworkers wearing. "I spend way too much money on merch," the cashier admitted. "But I just love it here."

Al Roker didn't show up that day, but that cashier sure did. He was a hero in that moment.

Why are grand gestures dangerous?

Waiting for a big moment can be a trap for employees. It causes them to miss smaller, everyday opportunities to align their actions with the service culture.

One client's leadership team got stuck on grand gestures.

I had delivered a keynote presentation on building a customer-focused culture. It was based on my book, The Service Culture Handbook.

Afterwards, the team brainstormed service culture stories and everyone kept going back to one moment. An employee had lost their home in a tornado, and employees banded together to raise money and find a place for him and his family to stay.

It was a terrific example, but employees don't lose their homes every day.

Employees needed more frequent examples to follow. It took some prodding, but the team eventually came up with some great stories that illustrate more common scenarios where the service culture guides them to be a hero to customers or employees.

What are your customer service hero moments?

You can find examples of customer service hero moments in many places if you look carefully.

Think about your most common interactions. Imagine how you can help your customers or make their lives better in those moments. That’s a great time to be a hero.

I travel a lot. My preferred airline is Alaska Airlines because the flight crews invariably make me feel welcome. An Alaska flight goes smoother and I arrive more refreshed than I do when I fly on other airlines.

There are some occasional over-the-top moments. A flight attendant expertly defused an angry and unreasonable passenger and prevented a mid-air scene.

But those moments are rare. Most flights feature everyday hero moments where flight attendants cheerfully take care of passengers and make the trip more comfortable. As a passenger, those flight attendants are my heroes!

Conclusion

Being a hero doesn’t require over-the-top gestures. You can be a hero just by being there when your customers need you.

These resources can help you build your skills:

  1. Free weekly tips: Customer Service Tip of the Week

  2. Book: Getting Service Right

  3. Training Course: Customer Service Foundations

Is your giant ego crushing your customer service?

"Who was it?! Who's making us look bad?!"

The employee was furious at her coworkers, and she let everyone in the customer service training class know it.

I was facilitating the class. The night before, I had completed a mystery shop on five random employees at the client's request. The class was shocked when I revealed the dismal results. Nobody passed.

One employee failed to meet a single service standard. They completely ignored me as they rang up my transaction because they were too busy talking to a coworker.

The employee in class wouldn't relent. She was furious at this unknown coworker for failing the mystery shop and insisted I tell everyone who it was.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that it was her. She was the employee who had failed to meet a single service standard. If anyone was making the team look bad, she was the one doing it.

Her giant ego was crushing customer service.

Sadly, this is a common problem. Inflated egos often get in the way of our ability to serve others. Here are three signs that your giant ego could be crushing customer service, too.

Do you feel superior to customers?

Customer service can get derailed when one party feels superior to the other.

Employees bristle at self-important customers who insist that the customer is always right. That outdated viewpoint isn't even the original quote!

Yet some employees treat their customers with disdain. Just this past week, I've observed employees:

  • Yell at customers for being confused.

  • Look down at customers for needing help.

  • Talk to customers in a patronizing manner.

The angry employee in my class felt superior. She felt superior to her customers when she served me without ever interrupting her conversation with a coworker. Now, she felt superior to her coworkers when she angrily demanded the "culprit" reveal themselves.

I realized I had been feeling a little superior, too.

My client had asked me to do the mystery shops before my class, and it had seemed like a good idea at the time. My ego convinced me that it would be helpful to secretly evaluate employees before the class so they realized they had something to learn. (My client suspected the results wouldn’t go well.)

Now I realized that the mystery shops had changed the usual training dynamic. As a trainer, it's my job to help people grow. Those mystery shops positioned me as someone who was there to judge the employees.

Are you overconfident in your abilities?

It feels good to be an expert in your craft. That feeling is often well-deserved, but customer service employees can make mistakes when they're overconfident.

One example is the tragic death of Pebbles, an emotional support hamster whose untimely demise was set in motion by an overconfident employee who gave the wrong answer to a customer's question.

The employee in my class was clearly overconfident.

She couldn't imagine it would be her who made the mistake. The employee felt her service was perfection and it must have been someone else who was making the team look bad.

In retrospect, I realize I was overconfident, too.

Why had I agreed to my client's request without first thinking through the ramifications? How could I possibly not have foreseen this ugly situation that was now playing out in my class, where employees felt wounded and angry?

A giant ego can cloud your brain.

Are you stubborn?

Stubborn employees don't want to admit their mistakes. They look for ways to shift blame and often victimize customers or even their coworkers in the process.

How many times has an employee said one of these things to you?

  • That's not my job!

  • Who told you that?

  • They never tell us what's going on.

All of these are examples of deflecting ownership.

The angry employee in my class was stubborn. She wouldn't relent, even after I refused to point out who had failed the mystery shops and reiterated the goal was growth.

Here's where I finally put my own ego in check.

I now understood that the training participants saw the mystery shops as a gotcha. It breached trust and hurt learning. The angry employee's outburst didn't help.

That was the last time I did a mystery shop before facilitating a training class.

From that point forward, I switched to employee observations where employees knew in advance I was coming. I always told employees that I was observing them and why.

The big surprise?

Employees didn't conceal any problems or bad behavior. I still saw plenty of cringe-worthy service encounters. Yet I also gained valuable perspective on why employees acted the way they did.

Best of all, I built trust that made my classes much better.

Conclusion

We all have an ego. The trick is to know when your ego is getting in the way and put it in check before Carly Simon sings a customer service song about you.

One exercise that can help you put your ego in check is the Thank You Letter challenge. It's a powerful way of visualizing yourself helping someone else.

Here's how it works:

  1. Write a thank you letter that you'd hope to receive from a customer.

  2. Read the letter every day before starting work for three weeks.

  3. Try to receive that same feedback from a real customer.

You can see more examples and even get free reminders to complete your own challenge.

Reduce average handle time with this one simple trick

Average handle time, or AHT, is an important metric in contact centers.

It measures the average length of a call. Many contact center leaders track AHT closely because shaving even a few seconds off the average call could allow the contact center to handle more volume without adding staff.

A Customer Service Tip of the Week subscriber recently wrote to ask my advice on reducing AHT in his contact center. I shared one simple trick that can produce immediate results.

It's a trick that I discovered more than 20 years ago while running experiments on AHT reduction. The results initially surprised me, but the more I looked at them, the more it all made sense.

The AHT Experiment

We started by gathering a sample of 20 contact center agents. The agents represented multiple shifts (we operated 24/7) and multiple performance levels.

For two weeks, the agents participated in a series of experiments to see if we could find a way to reduce AHT. One of those experiments revealed an unexpected solution.

Agents were asked to forget about AHT entirely. Instead, agents were asked to focus on the needs of each caller, one caller at a time. This meant that some callers needed extra assistance, and that was okay. Other callers were in a hurry, so it was okay to speed things up.

Two things happened at the end of the experiment

  1. Variability increased. The length of individual calls varied more widely than before.

  2. AHT decreased. The average length of calls went down.

One agent, Bev, surprised me the most. She was an otherwise great agent whose customers loved her, but Bev always struggled to meet the AHT standard.

Even Bev's AHT improved!

How did we lower AHT?

I spent time debriefing with agents and discovered a counterintuitive insight. The AHT goal itself was the root cause of higher AHT!

That's because agents tend to view an AHT goal as a target, not an average.

On long calls, agents would get anxious when the call time approached the AHT standard. This anxiety eroded listening skills and caused agents to become less friendly. Those issues made it more difficult to guide customers through issues that naturally required more time.

On short calls, agents became too relaxed. If a call was wrapping up well short of the AHT standard, agents would take their time. This made the call go longer than it needed to be, which drove up their average.

Agent stopped doing all that during the experiment.

That's why the calls became much more variable. Agents would spend the time they needed to guide a customer through a difficult issue. They would focus on quickly helping a customer if the customer had a simple issue or was in a hurry.

Now, here's the weird thing. I later ran similar experiments with contact centers that didn't hold their agents to an AHT goal, but did share the AHT stats with agents.

The same issue occurred there, even without the goal. Agents looked at the average as a target.

How to decrease AHT today

The secret to lowering AHT today is to ask your agents to stop thinking about AHT. Remove it from their scorecard and get rid of any reports or displays that remind them of an AHT target.

Instead, ask your agents to focus on helping each customer as efficiently as possible.

You don't have to take my word for it. Try running the experiment yourself and note what happens. You can even separate your contact center into two teams, a test and a control group, so you can compare the results of your own experiment.

Additional Resources

Here are a few additional resources that can help you reduce AHT even more.

  1. Three ways to effortlessly cut AHT

  2. Improve your call control skills (Myra Golden interview)

  3. How first contact resolution improves AHT

Five customer service tips for people with ADHD

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Customer service is hard.

It requires a lot of focus, calm nerves, and the ability to work through multiple distractions. All of that gets a lot harder when you have ADHD.

ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. There are three general types:

  • Inattentive

  • Hyperactive

  • Combined

Many common ADHD symptoms spell danger for someone who works in customer service:

  • Lack of focus

  • Hyperfocus (this makes it hard to notice your surroundings)

  • Poor time management

  • Weak impulse control

  • Poor emotional regulation

You can read more about ADHD and common symptoms here.

I have combined-type ADHD, which means I naturally struggle with both attention and hyperactivity. This was a huge challenge for me when I was growing up. In grade school, I frequently got in trouble for disrupting the class and was a master procrastinator when it came to homework.

While ADHD is still very present in my life today, I've learned some techniques that have helped me thrive. Here are five tips that work well for me.

Getting outside is one of the best ways to recharge my brain and restore my ability to focus. This is me standing atop Los Pinos Peak on a sunny day.

Tip #1: Create a vision

Nothing helps me focus on the right things better than a vision.

A vision acts as a compass to always point me in the right direction and get me back on course when I start to lose focus. Think of it as your overall intent when serving a customer.

For example, my vision is "Your Service Culture Guide." My clients come to me because they want to develop a customer-focused culture, so I always keep in mind that I'm there to guide them on their journey.

As an individual, you can create your own vision by completing the Thank You Letter Challenge. It's a fun exercise where you imagine a customer was so delighted with your service that they wrote you a thank you letter. The goal is to receive that same feedback from a real customer.

Visions can be even more powerful for teams or entire organizations. Incredible things happen when everyone is focused on the same goal. You can use this step-by-step guide to create a vision for your organization.

Tip #2: Manage Distractions

Consciously reducing and avoiding distractions can be a game-changer.

The world of customer service is full of distractions. Multiple customers vie for your attention. Coworkers constantly interrupt. Our computers flash pop-ups and our phones beep and buzz all day.

This is a huge challenge for anyone, let alone people with ADHD.

Fortunately, many of these distractions can easily be reduced or eliminated. Here are just a few examples of how I do this:

  • Reduce Notifications: Turn off unnecessary phone and computer notifications.

  • Clear Clutter: Keep a clean workspace to make it easy to find things.

  • Get Quiet: Find a quiet space to work on tasks that require concentration.

  • Rotate Tasks: Move to different tasks throughout the day to avoid zoning out.

  • Take Breaks: Recharge by taking regular breaks.

I asked people on LinkedIn to share their best tips for managing distractions and received some great advice.

Tip #3: Create a System

Customer service professionals need to keep track of a million little details. ADHD brains aren't good at doing that, but you can build a system to do it for you.

David Allen's classic book, Getting Things Done, provides the perfect blueprint for getting organized. Rather than sharing a rigid process, the book contains a set of principles for building a time management system you can trust.

For example, putting all of your reminders in one place, such as your customer relationship management (CRM) software or on your calendar, can reduce the amount of follow-up items that get lost on scribbled notepads, stickie notes on your computer monitor, and countless other places.

I read Getting Things Done over 20 years ago and the impact has been huge. Close friends and family members think I'm naturally organized and don't even know I have ADHD.


Tip #4: Buy Time

My boss often had to remind me to smile when I first started working as a cashier in a clothing store. I'd get so focused on ringing up transactions that the look of concentration on my face inadvertently looked like a scowl.

I was always worried about missing a simple detail, which happens a lot to me if I'm not careful. Eventually, I realized I could avoid mistakes and create better connections with customer by buying just a little time.

As a cashier, this meant trying to build rapport with each customer before starting their transaction. I'd chat a little while I scanned the customer's items and removed the security tag from each one. Then I would slow down and focus while I processed their payment because that was the moment when I needed to get things right.

I was free to engage with the customer once again after the payment was complete.

Try to find those moments in your own work. Identify situations where you need to slow things down and buy some time. Give yourself permission to express your natural creativity at other times.

Today, I support more than 10,000 Customer Service Tip of the Week subscribers on my own. I'm able to do this because it's almost exclusively via email. I can read each message carefully and respond thoughtfully to avoid misunderstandings or repeat messages.

Tip #5: Use Pomodoro

The Pomodoro Technique helps me when I really need to concentrate on an important task. Here's how it works:

  1. Pick a task you want to focus on.

  2. Set a timer for 25 minutes.

  3. Give yourself permission to focus on that task until the timer goes off.

  4. Take a short break.

  5. Pick a new task.

It's amazing how quickly you can get absorbed in doing work this way!

Resources

People with ADHD can face a lot of challenges at work. Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) has a great overview.

ADHD can be considered a workplace disability. In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires most employers to make reasonable accommodations to help people with disabilities do their jobs.

Consider asking for an accommodation if you've been diagnosed with ADHD and struggle at work. You can learn more from this article.

Finally, I've found ADHD 2.0 to be an invaluable book for learning about ADHD and discovering strategies for to maximize my effectiveness.

Does my team need its own mission statement?

Several of my clients have wrestled with this issue.

Some feel the overarching organizational mission doesn't clearly address the team's role. A department-specific mission might give employees more clarity.

Others worry that creating yet another statement adds confusion. Employees already have enough corporate statements to memorize.

Department mission statements are fairly common. An informal LinkedIn poll revealed that 41 percent of people worked on a team that had its own mission.

So what's the answer?

There are two situations where I've seen a department-specific mission statement work well. There's also one situation where it's not a good idea.

What is a mission statement?

Here's a quick primer on mission statements before we dive in. My preferred definition of a mission statement is this:

A mission statement broadly describes what an organization does.

Its purpose is to serve as a True North that points employees in the right direction when they get stuck or need guidance. This goes for how executives set strategy, how managers execute tactics, and how individual contributors perform their daily work.

For example, Osprey is a company that makes backpacks and other gear to help people enjoy the outdoors. Its mission focuses on that big picture:

We relentlessly innovate to ease your journey and inspire adventure.

You can see exactly what Osprey is trying to achieve from the picture below. I’m hiking on a remote mountain trail that overlooks the desert while wearing an Osprey backpack.

The best customer-focused mission statements share three characteristics:

  1. Simple and easy to understand.

  2. Focused on customers.

  3. Reflective of the company today as well as its aspirations for the future.

There’s sometimes a bit of confusion between missions, visions, and values. You can explore the difference between those different statements here.

Let’s move on to the big question. Does your team need to create its own mission statement?

Reason #1 to create a team mission

The best reason to create a department-specific mission is your organization doesn't already have one.

It's hard for an entire organization to create a service culture if the CEO doesn't support it. That makes it necessary for customer-focused leaders to focus on controlling what they can control. In many cases, that means working with their department to create a team-specific mission.

One leader I worked with helped her team develop its own mission. The team used the mission to guide its daily work and soon became known for outstanding service. Other departments in the organization began asking the leader for help transforming their departments, too.

Unfortunately, executive leadership never fully committed to service culture. It remained up to individual departments, so my client made a good decision.

Reason #2: the corporate mission is fluff

Some organizations have mission statements, but those statements are so full of corporate buzzwords that they lack any meaning.

That's a trickier call.

I worked with an organization that had a mission like that. Yet buried in all that fluff was some real clarity. You just had to dig for it.

The CEO didn't want to change the mission, so we created a campaign to help employees understand the true meaning. The goal was to get each person in the company to answer three questions:

  1. What is the mission?

  2. What does it mean?

  3. How do I personally contribute?

The campaign worked well. Most employees understood the mission and used it to guide their daily work, and the company enjoyed a period of sustained growth.

Another organization had a mission that was so fluffy it didn't mean anything. In that case, I helped a department create its own mission. The team used the mission to guide their work and was able to make a far bigger impact than it could have without a mission.

Why your team does not need its own mission

There are many cases when leaders should avoid the temptation to create a team-specific mission statement. Adding yet another statement when it’s not needed invites confusion for your employees.

Leaders often tell me they don't see their department's specific function reflected in the mission statement. Here are just a few things I've heard:

  • "It doesn't talk about accounting."

  • "We're IT, so we have a different mission than the organization."

  • The mission statement mentions customers, but not internal customer service."

Sound familiar?

I recently advised a client wrestling with this same challenge. They didn't see their function articulated in the organizational mission. Yet they ultimately decided not to create a separate mission.

It was a good decision, for several reasons.

First, the organizational mission was a good one. It clearly spelled out True North for all employees. Adding a team mission would just create confusion.

Second, my client realized a lot of their work required coordination with other departments. The organizational mission addressed what every employee should be doing, and was often used as an arbiter when disagreements occurred.

Finally, whenever my client's team talked about customer service, their stories aligned perfectly with the organizational mission. While the organizational mission didn't mention their team specifically, it really did align with their work.

Conclusion

It can be tempting to create a department-specific mission, but be careful. You might create more confusion instead of giving your team more clarity.

There are two situations when it does make sense to have your own mission:

  1. Your organization doesn't have one

  2. The organization's mission isn't customer-focused

In those situations, you can use this step-by-step guide to help your team write a statement your employees will love.

In some cases, it's a good idea to have an outside facilitator help you write the mission. Here's how to decide if that's the best solution for you.

How customer experience can save the environment

Sustainability is all the rage.

Consumers increasingly want it. Companies everywhere promote it. Governments demand it with new laws mandating sustainable practices.

The big trick is adopting sustainable practices without negatively impacting the customer experience. People want to save the planet, but they don't want to be inconvenienced.

Single-use grocery bags and coffee cups are an example. Billions get thrown away each year, but customers continue to use them because they are quick and convenient.

I recently followed the customer journey for two companies that are trying to tackle this issue.

One is James Coffee Co., a chain of four coffee shops in San Diego that provides customers with reusable glass jars instead of disposable cups. The other is Goatote, a reusable shopping bag system that's being piloted in New Jersey.

Let's take a closer look at each program to see if they can save the planet without ruining the customer experience. We’ll test each one via the Guaranteed Customer Experience framework.

The big question: does it work?

What promise do they make?

Companies attract new customers by promising to solve problems that people care about. According to the Guaranteed Customer Experience framework, a good marketing promise meets three criteria:

  1. Valuable: it addresses a problem that customers want to solve

  2. Specific: it's clear enough to avoid confusion

  3. Realistic: the promise can be consistently kept

James Coffee Co. promises to help customers eliminate single-use coffee cups by serving drinks in reusable glass jars.

A $1.50 deposit will get you a "Glass To-Go" set consisting of a glass jar, metal lid, and a koozie. You can return the set for a refund anytime or exchange it for a new one on your next visit.

That promise is consistently explained across the company's website, in-store signage, and via individual employees. Let’s see how it compares to the framework:

  1. Valuable: Mixed. The promise is valuable if you are concerned about reducing single-use cups.

  2. Specific: Yes, the Glass To-Go program is specific and clear.

  3. Realistic: Yes, the program works seamlessly.

I think James Coffee is underselling the value by missing a problem customers really want to solve: great tasting coffee.

Coffee sipped from a glass tastes much better than when you drink it through a plastic lid or from a paper cup. While sustainability is a good aim, my guess is more customers would be moved by the tangible benefit of better coffee.

Goatote promises to help customers who forgot their reusable shopping bags or don’t already have one. The state of New Jersey recently banned single-use shopping bags at large grocery stores, which creates a need for reusable shopping bags.

You can rent an unlimited number of reusable bags for $2.50 per month, or pay $1.00 for a one-time rental.

I didn’t observe a single customer use the Goatote system on two visits to the Target in Jersey City, New Jersey. Let’s look at how it compares to the Guaranteed Customer Experience Framework to understand why the promise was not compelling:

  1. Valuable: No, the promise is not valuable.

  2. Specific: No, the promise is inconsistent and unclear.

  3. Realistic: No, the program does not work.

Value can be defined by how well a promise addresses a customer's problem. At the Target store I visited in Jersey City, customers had the option to rent a Goatote bag for $1.00 (or a $2.50 monthly subscription) or buy a reusable Target bag for $.99.

The Target option clearly provided more value to a customer who forgot to bring a bag:

  • It’s one cent cheaper.

  • You didn’t need to return the bag. (Goatote rentals are 30 days.)

  • Unlike Goatote, you don’t need a separate transaction to acquire a bag.

Specific promises are clear and easy to understand. The Goatote program was not consistently or clearly explained. For example, the Goatote website is unclear about whether you need to download an app or how bags are returned.

I emailed Goatote to get clarification, but did not receive a response. A Target customer service rep told me via chat that I did need to download the Goatote app. Inside Target, a sales associate also told me I needed to download the app.

It turns out, you don’t need to download the app.

Realistic promises are ones you can consistently keep. Goatote customers must first create an account and I was unable to complete this step. This made the program unrealistic.


Is the promise kept?

A good promise can win a customer's business, but keeping your promise is what earns a customer's trust and gets them to come back.

James Coffee Co. easily kept its Glass To-Go promise. The process was smartly designed to include the reusable glass in the normal flow of ordering coffee.

  • A Glass To-Go kit was automatically added to each new order.

  • The cost of the kit was taken off your order if you brought in one to exchange.

  • Customers could get their deposit refunded by bringing the kit back to the counter.

A simple, frictionless customer experience makes a sustainability program easy for customers to get behind. I saw more than 60 percent of James Coffee Co. customers walk-in with a Glass To-Go kit already in hand and nobody seemed to have any problems with it.

And the coffee was very good.

Goatote was unable to keep its promise to rent me a reusable shopping bag. The process was very convoluted and then I hit a dead end.

To start, you either had to download the Goatote app or scan a QR code at the Goatote kiosk. This is a separate transaction from whatever you are purchasing at Target, so you’ll need to acquire your bag before or after you make your Target purchases.

I scanned the QR code rather than downloading the app.

Next, you had to set-up an account. My first attempt at a password was too weak, so I had to come up with a new password before moving forward. This extra friction would have been enough to stop me from renting a $1.00 shopping bag if I wasn’t writing this blog post.

The "Payment Method" button on the signup screen suggested I'd be entering my payment info next, but first I had to agree to the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy.

This is where I hit a dead end.

Clicking on the "Terms of Service" link led me to the website for a seemingly unrelated company. There were no terms of service to be found, so I couldn't read exactly what kind of shenanigans I'd be getting into with this $1.00 shopping bag rental.

Images of past Blockbuster Video late fees danced in my head, so no rental for me.

The privacy policy link did work. It was onerous, to say the least, clocking in at 3,796 words. Who knew a reusable shopping bag rental required such an extensive contract?!

Meanwhile, customers could simply purchase a $.99 reusable Target bag as part of their regular transaction. It was a simple process with no accounts to create, apps to download, or terms of service to read.

Does customer service support the promise?

Customer service is defined as the advice or assistance a company provides to those people who buy or use its products or services.

The customer service at James Coffee Co. was great.

A friendly barista clearly explained the Glass To-Go program to me. His explanation was consistent with what I read on the James Coffee Co. website and the sign I saw in front of the store.

He went a step farther by offering me a sample of coffee he had just brewed. Of course, he served it in a reusable glass rather than a disposable cup.

Goatote's customer service was uneven and confusing.

The company never responded to questions I emailed to both of the email addresses listed on its website. I did track down an email address for Renee Lundahl, Goatote's co-founder, who replied quickly, but I doubt the average customer would go to that trouble.

Target's customer service also sent an inconsistent message.

I did an online chat with a Target customer service rep prior to trying the Goatote system in-store. He told me that I had to download the Goatote app to use the system (which isn't true), though he did admit he had very little information on the program.

An associate in the store also told me the app was required to rent a bag, though I was able to initiate the process from the kiosk without an app. She didn't know much else about the system, though she did tell me people rarely used it.

Conclusion

The big question for each program is does it work?

  • James Coffee Co: Yes

  • Goatote: No

James Coffee Co. had a steady stream of customers on the morning I visited. More than 60 percent brought their Glass To-Go kit with them, which indicates they were repeat customers.

I did not see a single customer use the Goatote system. A Target employee confirmed the system was rarely used and customers generally chose to purchase the $.99 reusable Target bags if they didn’t already have a bag of their own.

The big lesson here is sustainability is important, but the customer experience has to be right if you want customers to accept your program. That means promising to solve a problem customers care about and then taking steps to keep your promise.

Check out The Guaranteed Customer Experience if you’d like to apply this model to one of your own products or services.

How your customer service pep talks can stay fresh

"My employees are tuning me out."

The customer service leader explained his company had a customer service vision that he talked about in every meeting. A customer service vision is a shared definition of outstanding service that gets everyone on the same page.

Unfortunately, employees were starting to get bored. They'd heard the manager talk about the vision so many times that it had gotten repetitive.

The manager knew repetition was vital to making something important. Employees were more likely to remember the vision and used in it their daily work because it was discussed so frequently.

He asked me how to reinforce the message while keeping it fresh. The manager was surprised to learn the secret was hidden in the other conversations he was already having with the team.

What helps people learn important concepts?

Two things help people learn and remember something: repetition and novelty. Hearing or experiencing something often helps it move from our conscious to our subconscious brain. Novelty helps maintain our attention.

The manager was already getting repetition right by talking about the customer service vision on a regular basis. This signaled that it was important.

Unfortunately, our brains tend to tune out messages we've already heard. That's where novelty comes in. Our brains are fascinated by novelty.

We're wired to noticed something new, unusual, or unexpected. That's why we could pass a hundred people walking by us on the sidewalk without giving them a second glance, but a person dressed in a gorilla costume whizzing by on an electric scooter would make us stop and stare.

The challenge is novelty isn't always easy to find unless you're looking for it.

Novelty Exercise: Here's an exercise you can try that will help. You can do this while walking in your neighborhood, on your morning commute, or any other time when you're traveling along a familiar route.

  1. Try to notice something you've never seen before.

  2. On the next day, repeat the exercise and try to notice something new again.

I've lived in the same neighborhood for 20 years, yet I can still do this exercise anytime when I walk around the block. There's always something I hadn't seen before if I look carefully enough.

How can you add novelty to team meetings?

You don't need to go far to search for novelty. Remember when I told the manager that the secret was hidden in the conversations he was already having with his team?

Every day, there's a new challenge to solve. It could be an unusual problem, an exciting new discovery, or just a new member on the team who is still learning how to be successful.

These situations provide all the novelty you need.

The manager talked about these customer service challenges in formal team meetings, one-on-ones, and team huddles. Employees loved working together to solve these problems and always paid attention.

I suggested the manager try to solve those challenges using the customer service vision as a guide. This naturally creates novelty because the situation is new while adding repetition because you use the vision to solve the issue.

Want a great example?

Check out Jesse Cole, owner of the Savannah Bananas baseball club. He frequently shares examples on LinkedIn of doing just that: solving problems by using the club’s customer service vision (and other principles) as a guide.

One recent story involved rallying the team to entertain fans even when the game itself was rained out.


Conclusion

The best leaders talk about customer service a lot. The truly great ones find new and novel ways to share the same message while keeping it fresh.

You can learn more about building a customer-focused culture from The Service Culture Handbook, a step-by-step guide to getting employees obsessed with customer service.

LinkedIn Learning subscribers can also access the video-based version.